9/27/2017

Jeff Sessions, Let Me School You About Colleges and Free Speech

Dear Jeff Sessions,

Yesterday, you gave a speech at Georgetown University, which I gather was some kind of punishment for misbehaving freshmen or something. The subject was freedom of speech, which, in light of your boss's call for the firing of professional football players who use their speech freely, is disingenuous at best and crass exploitation at worst.

Let's be clear what this was about: it was about the freedom of speech of conservatives who are being protested on college campuses. And, yeah, I happen to believe that people should be heard, even horrible people (like, you know, you and everyone in your sickeningly perverse party). In fact, let shitty humans keep talking. It's like watching a confused, angry moose fuck a log. You wanna tell it to stop, that it's gotta hurt and it's just embarrassing. But somehow, you can't look away because the moose just wants to bust a moose nut at all costs.

But lemme put on my professor hat here to tell you this: You and every goddamn whiny conservative who is suddenly so very concerned about the First Amendment can go suck all the donkey dicks you can fit into your elastic, lying mouths. Bitch, there are something like 4000 colleges and universities around the United States. The incredibly limited number of incidents you cite, while somewhat troubling (if you look at the facts, not your hyperbolic flatulence), are a drop in an ocean of campuses.

Most schools are filled with students who just don't give a fuck about this kind of shit. They just wanna go to their classes, maybe have some fun, and get their degrees. Hell, man, on my campus, someone wrote, "Trump" in chalk on the sidewalk during the 2016 campaign and no one ran to a safe room. Everyone just walked over it until it faded away. It's not that they're not engaged or politically aware or any of that. It's that shit rolls off them until it starts raining shit too heavily.

And as far as safe spaces and trigger warnings? What's wrong with telling students in a class, "Hey, we're gonna deal with some heavy stuff. Just wanna give you a heads up"? What's wrong with having places on campus where marginalized students can go and be heard?

And free speech? Hell, Jeff, the incompetent grifter who is Secretary of Education just fucking told rape victims on college campuses their speech didn't matter. If you wanna do some good for college students, deal with the harassment and physical violence that students face.

As for you, Jeff, and your faux high-minded crapfest of a speech (really, dude, the words "Martin Luther King" should never leave your shitheel mouth)? Oh, I could point out the myriad ways your examples are utterly wrong. The story you tell about students arrested at a Michigan college for "handing out copies of the United States Constitution"? They weren't arrested for handing out the Constitution. They were arrested and jailed for violating Kellogg Community College's bullshit policy restricting when and where any kind of free speech can occur. But that fucks up the narrative of loyal patriots being repressed, doesn't it?

Or you said, "at Boise State University in Idaho, the Student Code of Conduct prohibits '[c]onduct that a reasonable person would find offensive.'" And you leave it there. Except the Student Code of Conduct is pretty fuckin' clear what it means if you put in the full phrase. The school prohibits "Conduct that a reasonable person would find offensive such as lewd, indecent, obscene, or profane actions." In fact, BSU (heh) worked with both the conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation and the ACLU on crafting its speech code. Hey, I'm making a lewd and obscene gesture right now at your little monkey face, Jeff. Yeah, sit and rotate on that, you jibbering, repressed leprechaun.

Instead, how about we look at what Senator Jeff Sessions had to say about the First Amendment back in the day? You weren't so interested in protecting radical left-wing speech because you had a bee in your saggy bonnet over flag-burning for years. In 2000, during a debate over money in politics, you cited William Rehnquist, who said, "At best, burning a flag is a grunt or a roar" and then said, "The First Amendment is about intelligent debate, argument, concern over policy issues--not whether or not you have a 'grunt' or a 'roar' in burning a flag. I don't believe that was ever intended to be covered by the Constitution."

Yet you ask in your speech yesterday, "Who decides what is offensive and what is acceptable?" Well, I guess you fucking decided when it came to flag-burning. And, of course, to people laughing at your Lucky Charms ass.

That's because, really, underneath the hollow and dull rhetoric, underneath the grand pronouncements of the primacy of speech, underneath the obsequious invocations of civil rights protests and the forced disparagement of the KKK, there is a disdain for speech that appalls you.

You showed it quite clearly when you prevented dissenters from attending the lecture. You said it quite clearly when you thought you were making your big point, that the university "is transforming into an echo chamber of political correctness and homogeneous thought, a shelter for fragile egos."

No, it's not. There are excesses, sure, and those should be dealt with. But, mostly, it's a place for the pursuit of truth. The problem is that truth now doesn't include the entirety of conservative belief.

What you really want, Jeff Sessions, is a safe space for the spread of your lies.